1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electric wire branching connector device which is provided at an intermediate portion of a wire harness system and adapted for mutually connecting some of the electric wires in the harness such as to concentrically form branching circuits.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A typical conventional arrangement for forming branching circuits by mutually connecting electric wires in a wire harness system has a junction box accommodating BUS bars which are beforehand arranged such as to form required branches. The electric wires to be used in the branching circuits are extracted from the wire bundle of the harness and are connected at their end connectors to the corresponding sockets or receptacles of the junction box such as to form the desired branching circuits through the BUS bars.
According to this arrangement, the design of the circuits is fixed and, hence, cannot be adapted to a variety of circuit arrangements because the required branching circuits are constituted by rigid BUS bars. Thus, the design of the junction box including the arrangement of the BUS bars becomes necessary each time a circuit arrangement is to be made, requiring much cost and time.
In addition, since the branching circuits are formed by BUS bars arranged in layers through the intermediary of insulating plates, the size of the connector device as a whole, as well as the number of parts thereof, is inevitably increased. This runs quite contrary to the current demand for small-sized and compact wire harnesses.